She had done with shouting, hoped her insults would echo in Keith’s mind till the day he died. As for those biking goon-bullies, nothing could move them to feel regret, though if it was true that ‘vengeance was the Lord’s alone’ she hoped He would take care of it sooner rather than later, that they would find their Nemesis under the wheels of a hundred-ton juggernaut, and live only long enough to realize why it was that the Lord had done His work. As for that vile Jenny who had been to bed with one of them, and was stroking his greasy hair, and no doubt whispering praises for his part in the disgraceful riot, she would like to kill her and not let the Lord have the pleasure.
‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ She pressed his hands gently, seeking a response in his eyes, and speaking so close that no one would hear. ‘Whatever happens, I won’t leave you. I love you. We’ll always be together.’ Yet the statement was hard to believe, only her way to try and help him bear his suffering.
The room was filled with lovers, Garry saw, everyone paired off except him and his mate Wayne. There weren’t enough to go round, that’s why. His fists were his lovers, and they’d had a sufficient piece of action to last a few nights at least. He couldn’t remember yesterday, nor care less whether tomorrow came. If what that bag Sally screamed about him had been true he ought to wish it never would, but she hadn’t had a slate go into her thigh like a sabre. Without his leather trousers the leg would have been sliced off, and even then the gash was too deep to bear thinking about, though he didn’t want to bother anybody now that the job was over.
Fred wound an old sheet around him soaked in a bottle of iodine, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped, so he lay in his underpants like a wounded swaddie in the Falklands, bare legs thrust in front. Though the flesh was chilly there was the danger of getting a hard-on, and then where would he be, with everyone to see it?
He reached for his jacket, covering himself in case it happened. The fight had been more equal than Sally could have known. Lance would have been left headless if he hadn’t worn a helmet, and Wayne had a bruise as big as a headlamp from his forehead hitting a beam. They had taken enough damage between them to add up to as much if not more than Daniel had got, so he couldn’t feel bad about having put the boot in.
He had only intended getting him down after a couple of thumps to calm him, but the shock from the slate sent him a bit loco, the same with Lance and Wayne when they saw what happened. His laugh brought a glare of rank detestation from Sally, which made him laugh again. If Daniel had been killed he would have asked her to marry him, or take up with him. It must be wonderful, wedded to a woman who not only cursed like a navvy but mixed her spiel with words you hardly knew the meaning of. It would be an education listening to her, and the thought of such a future stopped pain drumming at his leg for a few minutes. Daniel, warped from birth, had still been lucky enough to shaft a nice big lovely woman with a vocabulary like a dictionary, which dirty video he’d better stop running through his brainbox or there would be more than a hard-on under his jacket.
Pity she won’t look at me, though not many of her sort would unless I chatted them up all evening and got them more than half seas over with a conveyor belt of short drinks. And where would I meet them, in the first place? The only way Fred the Landlord knew how to dress was to put on a white shirt and navy-blue suit, but even a happy walker like that must have better chances with women.
She had fallen for that schoolteacher all right, though when it started I don’t suppose she knew what she was getting into, no more than I did when I gave the lads a bell and asked them out for a spin. On a night like this! Well, I’d been sweating my bollocks off all day, and didn’t even have the tranny on to tell me the weather because the woman at the house said it interfered with her work at the word processor. You can’t win ’em all, but it would be nice now and again to win one.
Keith told himself he must look sharp, pull his finger out, do something for others’ sake as much as for his own, though it was hard to rouse his faculties or the energy. Inert in the brain, he knew he need only stand up for full power to flow back, to scratch his head and look as if in thought, able to settle every problem, for those around him to assume he was their man.
You felt more powerful after killing someone. He hated himself for it, yet could act and be strong, as long as he didn’t question. He went between sickness and wanting to live. His mother had died when he was seven, and everyone said that his father had killed her. Disease did not run in the family, but tragedy did. Every fatal illness began with someone thinking they had caught a cold. Maybe it still does. She was dead before anybody could do anything. His father had gone away with a woman, his Aunt Virginia said. His father later married the woman, who brought Keith up. ‘Your mother died from broken love,’ his aunt told him. Broken love? Did that mean suicide? He still half wondered what it meant though yes, he certainly knew. ‘She wouldn’t have done it but for your father betraying her. He was an absolute rotter. If he had only pretended to love her she might not have died.’
Keith was the age his father was when he’d had that devastating affair, killing his mother as surely as he had battered the life out of Gwen. His father still lived with the woman, because nothing can break a love affair started in such a way. At sixty-five, the old man was retired, and healthy, went to church every Sunday with his upright wife, the eternal lovers of a storybook Hertfordshire village.
His mother receded into dreams, and then was forgotten because he had grown to adore his father, the bitter injustice not striking till much later. He hadn’t even disliked Helen, who had looked after him like her own child because she couldn’t have any. Maybe that was why his father fell in love with her, never easy in body or mind with children, though when Keith was older he taught him to shoot at his rifle club, took him walking, boating and cycling, horse riding and skiing, visited the zoo and all the museums with him, and when Keith at fourteen wanted to be with his friends, his father left him to himself without the slightest fuss.
He would no doubt convince me with tears in his eyes that what happened thirty years ago hadn’t been his fault at all, Keith thought, and wondered how much his father’s life would be smashed when his only son was arrested for murder, which alone would be worth surviving any explosion for.
The click of Garry’s Zippo interrupted his speculations. ‘We’ve got to do something with that murderer. We didn’t get him down here for nothing.’
Wayne leaned across to share the flame. ‘That’s what I keep telling myself. If we’re going to be blown up in a few hours he ought to be made to pay for it.’
‘We’ll put him on trial.’ Garry was glad to turn his mind from the picture of Sally’s naked and active body, but he also wanted to torment her, as if she was responsible for the grinding pain in his thigh. ‘We’ll find him guilty, and then put him to death. Our helmets are black, so one of ’em will do for the cap. A bit of good old English justice, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I don’t want to die without somebody paying for it.’
‘How do we know we’re going to die, though, till we’re dead?’ Lance who had been listening opened his eyes to talk. ‘We might execute him, and then be alive tomorrow to tell the tale. That would put us in a fix. Not that I’m against killing him, mind you, even though he was my teacher.’
‘It’s a problem,’ Garry said, ‘and I don’t like problems. We should kill him for that alone.’